


A Friend in France

by TheSovereigntyofReality



Series: Iron Man & Asterix Crossovers [3]
Category: Astérix le Gaulois | Asterix the Gaul & Related Fandoms, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Civil War Team Iron Man, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Don't Like Don't Read, Gen, Literal Steve Bashing, Not Natasha Friendly, Not Steve Friendly, Not Wanda Friendly, Steve Bashing, Team Tony, Time Travel, not team Cap friendly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-16
Packaged: 2021-03-16 22:14:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29956680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSovereigntyofReality/pseuds/TheSovereigntyofReality
Summary: While on the run, Team Cap decides to deal with an unknown machine.It's a time travel machine.So Tony has to call on a friend in France.
Relationships: Asterix & Tony Stark, Astérix | Asterix & Idéfix | Dogmatix & Obélix | Obelix, Astérix | Asterix & Obélix | Obelix, Astérix | Asterix & Original Character(s), Astérix | Asterix & Panoramix | Getafix, Avengers Team & James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Avengers Team & Original Character(s), Dogmatix & Original Character(s), Happy Hogan & Pepper Potts & James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark, James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Original Character(s), Obelix & Tony Stark, Obélix | Obelix & Original Character(s), Tony Stark & Avengers Team, Tony Stark & Original Character(s), Tony Stark & Vitalstatistix
Series: Iron Man & Asterix Crossovers [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1779568
Comments: 46
Kudos: 190





	1. Gina LaChristie

**Author's Note:**

> **Disclaimer: If you recognise it from somewhere else, it isn't mine.**

Tony stared at the readings.

He blinked.

No, they were still there.

FRIDAY then solidified it, by explaining it to Rhodey, Pepper, and Happy.

‘How the hell did they manage to do that?’ Pepper demanded.

‘Probably the same way they do everything,’ Rhodey grumbled. ‘They blundered in.’

‘What I’m more worried about,’ Hap said, ‘is what they’ll do in the past. With the way they carry on, they might end up killing someone who’s important to history before they can do what they’ve gotta do.’

All of them winced at that.

‘Yeah, but what can we do?’ Rhodey asked. ‘It’s not like we can just follow them back and round them up.’

Ah, that was his cue. ‘Actually...we can.’

His friends all looked at him.

Tony turned around in his chair. ‘You know how every time I go to France, I meet up with those old friends?’

‘Yeah...’ Pepper drawled. ‘Juste and Gina LaChristie. Isn’t Gina another engineer? I thought that was why. You met with them for an engineering brainstorm or something like that.’

‘Yeah. Gina’s actually already invented a functioning time travel device. Her lab in her hometown is primarily used to study the actual process and figure out the rules for time travel.’

There was a moment of stunned silence.

Happy then barked out a laugh. ‘Jesus, boss! Now I get why you insist on me watching from a distance. I guess they don’t want knowledge of those kinds of experiments getting out.’

‘No, but if anybody can read and follow this time track, it’ll be Gina.’

‘You and Rhodey go,’ Pepper said. ‘I’ll stay and hold down the fort.’

Happy nodded. ‘I’m intrigued, but I got a job to do here.’

Tony nodded.

***

Rhodey followed Tony into France.

Of course, he contacted the French government before they passed France’s borders. Apparently, the time travel experiments were supposed to be top secret – and Tony knew it. Their reaction to an American billionaire and superhero knowing was hilarious. Tony had a good chuckle himself before he assured them.

‘How I know is perfectly innocent. I’ll be happy to explain it later, but right now Gina’s expecting us.’

‘Gina? You’re on first-name terms with Dr. LaChristie?’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘…Very well.’

With permission to enter France, Tony led Rhodey to a little country town in Brittany. But it wasn’t an ordinary town. They landed outside of the town walls – and it did have fortified walls, tall as any. But they were made of metal. If he wasn’t mistaken, it was a steel alloy with something glinting in the sun. The wall almost seemed to sparkle.

In the watchtower, a man leaned over to look down at them. Tony shot him a wave. The guy grinned and pulled his head back in.

‘Metal walls?’ Rhodey asked.

‘They used to be stone,’ Tony explained. ‘But this town granted asylum to Nazi targets during the war until they could be shipped off somewhere safe. Hitler knew that, so they encased the stone walls in metal.’

‘And what’s catching the sunlight?’ Rhodey asked.

‘They imbedded diamonds in the metal to make it stronger.’

Rhodey took a moment to absorb that. Then he looked around and the tall walls that seemed to arc around a territory that took up a significant portion of land. ‘ _How_ did they get that many diamonds?’

At that moment the gates were opened in front of them. Rhodey looked over, expecting to see them opened by machinery. After all, stone walls encased with a steel-diamond alloy were sure to weigh far too much for humans to move. He gawked when he saw the doors were actually being pulled and held open by men, unaided by devices.

‘They made them,’ Tony simply said as he walked in. Immediately, he struck up a conversation with the Frenchmen that’d opened the gates.

Slowly, Rhodey followed him. Tony led him into the town and through. Rhodey looked around in amazement as they walked past masses of people. They lifted, with their bare hands, things that should have weighed far too much were being tossed between people like beach balls. Kids ran around playing regular games at unbelievable speeds. One of the adults called out in French to them.

_‘Careful, kids! We have some visitors!’_

Rhodey frowned as he watched Tony move through this town like he knew it. ‘How many times have you been here?’

‘Mostly when I was a kid,’ Tony said. ‘Since I’ve only come every now and again. But I lived in this town for a whole summer when I was sixteen.’ He gave a tight smile. ‘I wasn’t on speaking terms with dad at the time.’

Rhodey nodded. ‘So, there is a whole town of enhanced people and you knew? I guess this explains why France was the first place you approached when you decided to branch SI out internationally.’

‘One reason why, yes,’ Tony said. ‘This place is a last resort if something like the Nazi invasion happens again. That way, if conventional methods fail, then they have these guys to run over and kick the invaders out. And the contract legitimising that has enough stipulations on it that they can’t be used as an aggressive force by anyone.’

Rhodey smirks. ‘Let me guess: it lists them as “civilians”, bars them from enlisting in the military, and gives them the right to refuse mobilisation orders on moral grounds.’

Tony nodded. ‘Among other things.’

‘How’d they get a deal like that?’ Rhodey asked. ‘We’re still fighting for several of those very same stipulations in the US version of the Accords.’

‘Because their enhancements were only discovered during the Nuremburg Trials, when a lot of escaped Nazi targets referenced Yaudet – a town that was marked nowhere on a map. And the name of the town earned some...aggravated responses from various members of the Nazi military. There was enough good will aimed at them that they were able to make the terms of their contract with the French government exactly what they wanted it to be.’

Rhodey nodded. ‘So, they sent their best and brightest to ride out the good will the Nuremburg Trials gave them and got the French government to agree to a deal that benefited them.’

Tony grinned. ‘It wasn’t a stupid thing to do. There are several men in every military just like Ross, and they’ve been like this for centuries. They know all about them. This way, they kept themselves from becoming the living weapons that those kinds of people would have wanted them to be. And those people had a whole community to think of – not just men, but women, children, and the elderly as well.’

Rhodey nodded. ‘I get it, man. Actually, I’m impressed. So, how did they end up like this?’

‘During the Roman Occupation of Gaul,’ Tony said. ‘It was just a small village of about forty or fifty men, so it wasn’t high on the Empire’s list of priorities until after they won at Alesia. Then they tried to establish power over every single town and village. It gave this particular village’s druid the time to find a formula that temporarily endowed the drinker with super-human strength.’

‘Temporarily?’ Rhodey asked and looked around at the clear signs that the formula was still very much in effect.

‘Our ancestors,’ a blond Frenchman said as he approached, ‘drank the stuff throughout the entire Roman Occupation. It eventually mutated into their cells, rendering its effect permanent on all of us.’

Tony nodded. ‘Rhodey, meet Juste LaChristie.’

***

Tony and Rhodey followed Juste into the only laboratory space in town.

Juste was looking at the StarkPad Tony had brought along, cursing under his breath, as he used a key card to get them into the elevator. The data might have been worse than Rhodey had thought. Or maybe he just didn’t know enough about time travel to really appreciate how bad the situation was. Or maybe, it was just the same kind of grumbling as they’d been doing.

The elevator doors opened and Juste led them out onto a viewing deck. A group of scientists were standing around, watching something. Juste led them over to a blonde woman. She turned her head slightly. When she saw Tony over her shoulder, her lips quirked upwards. Tony led Rhodey over to see what they were observing.

In the lower room there was a pot plant, growing at an accelerated rate. But it was also quickly withering and dying. The blonde woman pointed to somebody. The other scientist flicked a number of switches. The air pressure in the room below seemed to change, but nothing happened. The blonde woman clicked her tongue.

‘ _D’accord_.’ She grabbed a voice recorder and started talking in French. It was faster than he was used to hearing it, but he got the basic gist. They couldn’t reverse time for the plant once it’d died. She was ordering further experiments on that fact. That said, she turned around. ‘Hello, Tony. Long time, no see.’

‘Yeah.’ Tony stepped over and hugged her. He stepped back then. ‘This is my friend, Rhodey. Rhodey, Gina.’

Gina stepped forward and shook Rhodey’s hand. ‘A pleasure to meet you, Col.’ She then looked between them. ‘Why do I have the feeling you didn’t come here for a pleasure trip?’

‘Because they didn’t.’ Juste handed her the StarkPad.

Gina read over it for a moment, and then she swore.

***

Gina led Juste, Tony, and Rhodey into the staff kitchen. She then grabbed out blue prints while Tony made his way across to the espresso machine. Gina laid the map on the table. ‘Okay, this is the room we leave from. It’ll land us in the woods outside the village.’

‘It’s oddly fortuitous that they landed in the same time period you used to run around in,’ Juste remarked. ‘You know, back when you made the watch.’

‘A few years after, actually,’ Gina said. ‘But the point is the same. I doubt either Asterix or Obelix have settled down by that point.’

‘Those were the guys that liked going on adventures?’ Tony asked, pulling out of the fridge with the milk. He headed back over to his half-made coffee. ‘I remember you told me about that. Something went pear-shaped, and they got sent out. What were they? Twenty-something-or-other?’

‘Something like that,’ Gina said. ‘They’ll probably be told to escort us there too.’

‘Whoa,’ Rhodey said. ‘So how did you work it out? Where they ended up?’

‘You saw the scanner?’ Gina asked. ‘Well, it’s linked to a satellite that the French government sent up and can scan any place on the planet. The whole purpose is to monitor other time travel activity on the planet. With your data, we were able to zero in on it. There’s a particular type of energy emitted with time travel. We use that data to determine the when and where. I could go into more detail, but then we’d be here all day.’

Rhodey chuckled. ‘That’s why you got Tony to help you with the readings.’

Tony sniffed as he walked over. ‘My math is impeccable.’

Juste grinned. ‘Hard as it might be for some to accept, it’s true. So…now that we know when they land, we have to work out how long it’ll take us to get there from here.’

‘That means, explaining it to Vitalstatistix and the council,’ Gina said, ‘getting a boat, and sailing there in 50BC.’

‘Including the stops for food and Obelix’s insistence on fighting any pirates we see,’ Juste added.

Gina pointed to her brother and nodded.

‘Two months?’ Juste suggested.

‘Little bit more than that,’ Gina said. ‘And as for return time…’

‘It’ll have to be some time after this,’ Rhodey said.

‘Yup,’ Gina said. ‘How long would it reasonably take the local special forces to organise so they can snap them up when we return to the present?’

***

‘The pads are strategically placed,’ Gina explained as they all stepped up to the machine. She, Juste, Rhodey, and Tony were all going. Both Gina and Juste had full packs slung over their shoulders. ‘Nobody will end up inside of a tree, I mean. And areas about to be time-hopped into send out waves that scare living things away so you won’t end up stuck in a wild boar or something.’

‘Don’t make me hungry,’ Juste complained.

‘Shaddup,’ Gina said. ‘We ready?’

‘Ready as we’ll ever be,’ Rhodey said.

Tony nodded.

‘Okay.’ Gina lifted her wrist and hit a button on her watch.

The machine roared to life.


	2. Welcome to Gaul

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to Gaul.
> 
> Nobody speaks English here.

Gina stepped out of the circle and looked around, breathing in the fresh air of the ancient Gaulish forest. She’d forgotten how clean the air was after the years she hadn’t been back. It gave her the same feeling you got after eating a mint. Behind her, she heard her brother, Tony, and Rhodey notice too.

‘Whoa,’ Rhodey murmured, looking around. ‘Did it really work?’

Familiar yapping reached Gina’s ears. ‘Yup.’ She turned in the direction of the yapping and crouched down.

A moment later, the little white terrier exploded out of the trees.

Gina quickly switched to Amorican-Gallic. ‘ _Hello_ , Dogmatix!’

Dogmatix happily hopped up to lick at her face. It didn’t take long after that for two more figures to emerge from the bushes, the larger of the two with a dead boar over his shoulder.

‘Gina?’ Asterix asked. ‘ _I thought you went back to your own time_.’

‘ _I did_ ,’ Gina straightened up, ‘ _but recent events have forced me to return_.’

‘ _Like what_?’ Obelix asked as he leaned down to scoop Dogmatix up onto his hand.

‘ _I’m afraid some criminals from my own time, with powers of their own, have managed to accidentally time travel here_ ,’ Gina said. ‘ _They’re already responsible for an untold number of deaths and life-changing injuries for innocent bystanders. We need to stop them before they irrevocably damage history_.’

***

Any doubt they had on time-travelling was removed once Gina’s friends, Asterix and Obelix, took them to the village. First thing, it looked like the fish-fights Tony had frequently witnessed really _were_ an ancient tradition. There was one going on right in the middle of the village they walked into.

He’d honestly thought she was just being funny.

A half-rotted fish came flying in their direction. Gina caught it. ‘You know what?’ She spoke in English for the first time since they arrived. ‘I’m older and more mature now. This is no less gross.’  
Rhodey pulled a face. ‘Where’d that come from?’

‘The fish stall,’ Gina said.

‘He’s not selling them like that?’

Gina chuckled. ‘Unhygenix has never really grasped the concept that he lives right next to the ocean. He orders these from the capitol and they take two weeks to arrive. At this point in history, that’s what starts most of the fish-fights.’

Tony froze as he tried to wrap his head around that.

At that point, Gina’s attention was pulled as an old man with a long beard and wearing white robes walked over. Gina cheerfully greeting him as “Getafix” and dug into her pockets before producing a slip of paper. After checking it, she handed it over. That was funny. Tony was sure that Gauls were a society that passed on their knowledge and history orally. Still, it wouldn’t be totally out there to imagine some of them _could_ read.

Moments later, Gina gestured for them to follow and led them all into a large hut where they met a heavy-set man in a green tunic and red hair. Gina greeted him and he smiled as he returned the greeting. There was a little blonde woman sitting off to the side doing some embroidery. She and Gina met gazes and nodded in the way you nod to someone you know and you don’t dislike them…but you don’t really like them either.

Gina then launched into her explanation.

The language was completely strange to Tony, but he could gather what Gina was talking about mostly from her body language. For instance, he knew when she was talking about the serum because she made wide, exaggerated gestures with her hands, and she seemed to share the amusement of the men in the hut. Of course, given that this was the era when they were administering the, for lack of a better name, Magic Potion, that was understandable.

And Tony could tell when Gina started talking about the Avengers. She would periodically point back to him and Rhodey.

‘Charming language, isn’t it?’ Juste remarked quietly.

‘Do you understand a word of it?’ Rhodey asked.

‘No. Until today, I’d never heard her speak it. I knew she could, of course but…she’s never had a need to speak it.’

Tony looked back as Gina mimicked Wanda’s hand motions while she was speaking and then tapped her skull. Now the whole room looked disturbed. Getafix was stroking his beard, clearly deep in thought. Wasn’t that the guy that came up with the Magic Potion? Maybe he was trying to think of a way to nullify Wanda’s powers. He seemed to be, because he asked her a question.

Apparently the body language for “no idea” was ancient because she gave the shrug as she answered. She then seemed to offer up three options.

Juste clearly knew what they were. ‘Yeah, we noticed that. We can’t work out if Wanda’s control fluctuates according to her emotional state, if it’s her powers that are unstable, or if she does it on purpose.’

‘Huh.’ Rhodey folded his arms. ‘You know, I can’t work that one out either. And I’ve actually seen her training.’

‘When did you find the time to look all this up?’ Tony asked.

‘When we were getting the room set up,’ Juste said. ‘Gina knew she’d have to give a full account of the problem, so she did her homework.’

A few minutes later, Gina was obviously explaining the airport fight and Asterix asked something, leading Gina to turn. ‘Tony, can you pull out your gauntlet?’

Tony stepped forward and hit the activation code on his watch. The gauntlet unfolded from his wristwatch so they could all see it. Gina reached over and pulled him closer so they could see it as she explained the suit (most probably). Oh! Obviously, Asterix had asked how Tony could be okay after all that weight Wanda threw onto him. Gina finished her explanation of suit by gesturing to Tony’s whole body.

Getafix nodded as if this all made sense.

Gina then went on with her explanation and Tony knew what was next: Siberia.

Sure enough, she soon went on to gesture over his body where all his injuries from the Siberia fight had been. Tony was reasonably sure she hadn’t said why the fight had happened. But he knew they would ask. And that…made Tony uncomfortable. Gina then probably explained why Tony was standing after all of that.

Then the woman off to the side said something.

Judging from Gina’s expression, it was exactly the question Tony was worried about. She turned back to him. ‘They want to know _why_ you guys ended up fighting in Siberia.’

‘You actually know that?’ Tony asked softly.

Gina folded her arms. ‘If I can hack in to find out what your injuries were, I can certainly hack into a disused base to find out why you ended up with those injuries.’

Tony didn’t really want to share, but he also knew it was part of the deal. They needed help to get to the place that Cap and his merry band of moron would land in. Slowly, he nodded.

Gina turned back to her Gaulish ancestors and answered the question in a sombre tone.

The reaction was instantaneous. First, the look of shock on all their faces. The woman to the side then lowered her head wordlessly. Getafix bowed his head. Asterix and Obelix took their helmets off and bowed their heads. The chief took his helmet off, bowed his head, and said something in the same sombre tone.

Gina turned back to Tony and translated. ‘He says “we’re sorry for your experience and your loss, but we trust that Ankou took them quickly”.’ She gave a tight smile. ‘That’s their prominent God of the Dead. It’s a pretty common Gaulish phrase for expressing condolences.’

Tony didn’t look at Rhodey. He knew what his best friend would have picked up from that. ‘Can you say “thank you” for the condolences in a socially acceptable way?’

‘For this time period?’ Gina waited for his nod before she turned and relayed the message.

The chief nodded and replaced his helmet. He said something else.

Gina answered and dug a slip of paper out of her pocket. Just how many of those had she crammed into her pockets? Tony was standing in exactly the right spot to see it. She had made a graph that listed out a handful of the Avengers’ main battles. Next to each place name, there were two numbers. One number was the number of casualties, and the other was the fatalities.

Gina read it out, in the local dialect, of course, and then looked up. She spread her hands and spoke in a tone you might use when saying, “And then they refused to take any responsibility for any of it.”

The chief sat back and looked thoughtful even as he spoke. He then pointed to Asterix and Obelix.

‘What’s going on?’ Tony asked.

‘We’re going to the middle east with Asterix and Obelix,’ Gina said. ‘Which is what I expected.’

Then Getafix said something else.

Gina nodded. ‘There’s a merchant ship due here tomorrow morning. We’ll catch a ride with him. Asterix and Obelix have done that before.’

***

They were given a hut to spend the night in.

Rhodey was glad it was a warm night, but the straw mattresses were surprisingly comfortable. And the hut was surprisingly warm. He guessed it made sense, in a way. There were no heating appliances in ancient times so they had to trap warmth in somehow. He’d just never really thought of it before.

But he had something else to be worried about.

The fact that Gina had asked Tony before she said whatever made the villagers offer Tony condolences…Well, Tony had never expounded on what happened in Siberia. There was also something about a God of the Dead. Rhodey had a very nasty feeling about what’d happened by now. He’d been turning it over in his head for hours.

Rhodey looked across the hut to Tony.

‘Tones, you awake?’ he asked softly. He suspected he would be. He could hear Juste’s soft breathing as he slept, but Tony was a notorious insomniac.

‘Yeah,’ Tony said.

Well, the only way to find out would be to ask. He’d asked before, but no one had hacked in and found it before. And now Tony would be _expecting_ the question. ‘What happened in Siberia?’

Sure enough, Tony sighed heavily. For a moment, he said nothing. Then, ‘It was a trap. Zemo had already killed the Winter Soldiers. He had a tape with him, though.’ Tony audibly swallowed. ‘December 16, 1991.’

Rhodey’s heart froze. He knew what was coming next.

‘Dad was stone-sober,’ Tony murmured. ‘Turns out Barnes was sent to kill them, and HYDRA recorded it for whatever reason. Rogers knew, the son of a bitch. I punched him. Then Barnes turned his gun on me, and you can probably work out the rest from there.’

Rhodey swallowed down the sick feeling in his gut. ‘…Yeah.’

***

The next morning, Tony was amused to see Gina had emerged wearing a heavy overcoat.

It made sense, though, he supposed. He wasn’t sure how long it went back that women were considered bad luck on ships. Enough men wore their hair long that she could get away with it. He was also amused when some of the ladies handed her a sack and she grinned and nodded at them, and then said to Tony, Rhodey, and Juste, ‘Lovely ladies. Terrible gossips.’

Tony did notice, however, as they walked towards the beach and said goodbye to the villagers that Gina pulled out a cricket ball and proceeded to play toss and catch with it.

When they got down to the beach and met the merchants, she left the talking to Getafix and Asterix.

The following journey with Asterix, Obelix, and Dogmatix, was long and often boring. The sack the village ladies had given Gina turned out to be full of fruit and vegetables, which were shared among everyone. Well, that would keep the scurvy off. Tony watched as Gina said practically nothing throughout the whole trip.

Although there was one bit of excitement.

The man in the crow’s nest suddenly yelled something.

Obelix’s immediate response was to cheer and then dive into the water, despite Asterix yelling at him. Tony looked over and saw him swimming, very fast, towards a ship with a Jolly Roger flying from its mast. He then leaned on the edge of their ship with Rhodey, the LaChristie siblings and the crew and watched as Obelix single-handedly beat up the pirates and scuttled their ship. Then he leisurely swum back.

Most exciting part of the whole trip.

But Tony was more than happy to see land, even if it was mainly desert.

As soon as they said goodbye to the merchants, Gina began talking again.

Tony had listened to the conversation enough that he got the basic gist of what she was saying to Asterix and Obelix.

“There’ll be a facility here in 2000 years,” she was saying as she takes careful measured steps over the sand. “This whole area will be flattened. If I’m right, they should appear right over this dune here.” She dropped to her hands and knees and crawled over it. Peering over the top to the desert below.

Tony thought Obelix made a remark on how hot the sand was at he and Asterix crawled up the dune to join her. Tony and Rhodey moved up on her other side while Juste pulled a large sand-coloured sheet out of his pack and spread it over them, effectively camouflaging them with the sand. Then he ducked underneath.

‘You’re prepared for everything, aren’t you?’ Rhodey remarked.

‘Gina and I already worked out what we’re going to do.’ Juste nodded.

‘It shouldn’t be too much longer.’ Tony glanced at his watch. ‘A few minutes at best.’

***

Gina was explaining the plan to Asterix and Obelix, her cricket ball in hand.

‘ _So, you’re gonna throw that at her head_?’ Asterix asked.

‘ _Just hard enough to knock her out for a few hours_ ,’ Gina said. ‘ _The last thing we need is her throwing us all over the place. She’d make this a problem, and that’ll leave me only one person to worry about. I’ll use a game of fetch with_ Dogmatix _as an excuse. If I’ve got_ Rogers _figured right, he’ll be easy to fool. That’ll give you men time to sneak around behind them. Juste has the restraints_.’

Asterix looked uncomfortable. ‘ _I don’t know. Easily duped or not, from what you’ve said this fellow has no gallantry_.’

‘ _He doesn’t. I’m counting on him wanting to put up an appearance_.’ Gina smiled lightly. ‘ _Would it make you feel better if I had Juste approaching from the front with me_?’

‘ _It would_.’

Gina nodded and turned to her brother. ‘Juste, slight change of plan. You’re approaching from the front with me.’

‘I don’t think Rogers would believe it’s an accident if I do it,’ Juste said. ‘I’m a guy.’

‘No, I’m still throwing the ball,’ Gina said. ‘Asterix and Obelix are coming from behind.’

Tony’s eyes sparked as he worked out their plan. ‘So…’ He summarised it.

‘That’s about it,’ Gina said. ‘Any tips?’

‘Asterix is right,’ Tony said. ‘Once Rogers realises what’s going on he will attack you…unless he’s otherwise engaged. Barton will probably pop out an arrow, if he has any left. Wilson will back Rogers up. Romanoff will go for the men, so you want to intercept her pretty quick. The ant-guy hasn’t been jumping in very often. Turns out he needs a special liquid to do the changing, and he’s either run out of it or he’s come pretty close.’

‘You’ll want to take out him first off,’ Rhodey said. ‘The last thing you want is for him to go real big or real small.’

Gina nodded. She turned and relayed the message to Asterix and Obelix.

There was a massive flash of light.

‘Here we are,’ Gina muttered.

Asterix looked over at her. ‘ _You don’t do that_.’ He popped open his gourd of Magic Potion.

‘ _I used to_.’ Gina took her cricket ball and stood up. She aimed, and bowled. ‘Dogmatix, _fetch_!’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I did a bit of research on why women were considered bad luck on ships. The ancient people said it made the Gods angry and, thus, the waters choppy/stormy. But it basically boils down to the old song and dance of "the men found them distracting".
> 
> Next week, Steve and his team get to meet the original superhumans.

**Author's Note:**

> I am using the English names for the Asterix characters, so just look at the tags to work out who everyone is if you didn't grow up with these names.


End file.
